It’s official – the best hike on Hong Kong's Southside is the Dragon’s Back! That's according to Southside Magazine readers' votes. And Theadora Whittington has illustrated it in her children's book, The Dragon's Back, newly reprinted. Read more, and see more of Theadora's sketches and illustrations, on her blog.

Walking is the best way to get to know any city, and Macau — the former Portuguese colony returned to China in 1999 — is made for walking. Only seven miles square, one can easily walk from the Border Gate to the A-Ma Temple at the tip of Macau in a day. Todd Crowell’s guidebook Explore Macau describes eight routes [...]

How long would it take to walk across the world's most populous country? Find out by listening to Graham Earnshaw's story. He'll be speaking at Garden Books -- 325 Changle Road, Shanghai -- at 6pm on Saturday 26th February. 40 RMB includes one drink. Graham's book The Great Walk of China is a journey into China's heartland, away from its [...]

As the weather cools, I'm pleased to announce the publication of The Heritage Hiker's Guide to Hong Kong -- available from all local bookshops from later this week, or directly from the website of FormAsia Books. When I began to write the book which became the first in this series – a walking guide to Hong Kong’s high peaks and [...]

As someone who makes a living partly from writing guidebooks, I was a natural choice to show a friend of a friend around on their brief stopover in Hong Kong recently. She was only in town for a few hours, so I met her at her hotel on the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront and planned to take her on a [...]

In advance of Graham Earnshaw’s talk at the Beijing Bookworm on Saturday, here’s a chapter from his brand new book, The Great Walk of China. After crossing flat country for most of the distance from Shanghai, Graham finds himself in the Dabie Mountains of rural Anhui Province. Chapter 2: Drinking Games The day’s walk was over and I returned to [...]

In related developments, Hong Kong residents are taking to the hills in record numbers -- at least, if sales of this guidebook are anything to go by. Other Asian cities don't have such spectacular mountains and beaches so close at hand, so we're lucky to have such a wonderful natural resource. Check out some of the photos in this book [...]

How long would it take to walk from Shanghai to the edges of Tibet? Long-time China resident Graham Earnshaw is in the process of finding out. His westward trek is described in his new book, The Great Walk of China, out at the end of this month. Through his conversations with the people he meets along the way, Earnshaw paints a [...]

High ridges, sparkling waterfalls, lush feng shui woods and ancient fishing communities nestled in rocky harbours. Your mind refreshed, your limbs exercised, and your senses intoxicated, you wonder at the fact that only a few miles separate all this from one of the world’s most crowded cities. The Serious Hiker's Guide to Hong Kong -- the bestselling guidebook to the [...]

Veteran Hong Kong and China journalist Graham Earnshaw -- who is currently engaged on a series of walks from Shanghai to Tibet, picking up each time from the place he left off -- was interviewed this week for Shanghai Urbanatomy's Why I Write column. His latest book, The Great Walk of China, will appear in early 2010. Graham will also [...]

Further to last month's post about the Danxiashan national park in Guangdong, it's worth mentioning that many of the rock formations bear uncanny resemblances to human sexual organs. (I have no photos of those, but Wikipedia does). Ancient Confucians probably avoided the area for these reasons, and it's still very much off the beaten track, but modern China has few [...]

Hiking recently in Shaoguan, in northern Guangdong, I was grateful for the handy suggestions offered by the local authorities, and I fell down the hillside paying the proper attention to health and safety. The Danxiashan region of the province is a weird landscape of forest punctuated by dramatic red sandstone formations and divided by meandering rivers. Some of the hilltops [...]

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Blacksmith Books publishes Hong Kong and China-related non-fiction – biography, business, culture, current affairs, food, photography and travel – and through distributors in Asia, North America, Australia and the UK, we present the works of our local and expat authors to readers worldwide.